Born at the family seat of
Rossmore Castle, William Warner Westenra was educated at Scaitcliffe prep school and
Eton College before reading Theology at
Cambridge University. He inherited his father's title in 1958, by then his family's ancestral home had long been abandoned, due to
dry-rot, and they instead lived in a dower house on the estate, which was sold in 1961 due to debts. A former gamekeepers house on the estate to which he moved was later destroyed by a fire started by the
Irish Republican Army in 1981. Following the end of his relationship with
Marianne Faithfull, whose experience with drug addiction led him to support the founding of the Coolmine Therapeutic Community and drug treatment centre in 1973, he met and married Valerie Marion Tobin, in 1982 and their son, Benedict William was born in 1983. Westenra, upon his marriage to Tobin, adopted her daughter Charlotte, whose father was
Leonard Whiting. Charlotte took the Westenra family name. He continued to work as a photographer and painter for many years. He later returned to
Glin Castle where he had first encountered Faithfull and her then-boyfriend,
Mick Jagger, to photograph the castle for an upcoming coffee table book. His marriage to Valerie was dissolved, prior to his death in 2021. ==Notes==